Robert Frost's adulthood was also riddled with loss. He often felt jealous and resentful that the quality of his poetry was slow to be recognized. Unable to support his family with his writing, for many years he had to work at various jobs, often as a teacher until his grandfather finally gave him land to live on and an allowance with on which to live (Meyers, p. 52). In addition, although he and his wife had four children, three died: a son at the age of four; a daughter before she was 30 from tuberculosis, and another son by suicide. These losses put stresses on his marriage (Lovett-Graff, 2004).
Before moving to his grandfather's property, Frost moved his family to Great Britain in 1912, disillusioned by the lukewarm successes he had experienced in the United States. In England he connected with several other poets, including T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, who publicly praised his poetry thus helping him establish himself as a major poet (Lovett-Graff, 2004). Frost soon began publishing anthologies of poetry and came back to his native country a respected writer...
He was chosen to join the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and received his first of four Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry in 1922. In 1961, two years before his death, he was asked to read his poem "The Gift Outright," from the collection that won him his fourth Pulitzer Prize in 1942 (Lovett-Graff, 2004).However, he remained resentful that he never won a Nobel Prize for Literature (Lovett-Graff, 2004).
Between Robert Frost's troubled childhood and the stresses and losses he experienced as an adult, it is no wonder that some of his poems reflect loss, despair, or confusion. The wonder is that many of his poems celebrate the simple joys of life.
SOURCES
Lovett-Graff, Bennett. "Robert Frost." 2004: Gale Encyclopedia of Popular Culture.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Robert Frost: a biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.
Wikipedia contributors. 2006. "Robert Frost." Wikipedia. Last revision August…
